Why Don’t the Big 4 Switch to Web Standards?

Why don’t Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Google attempt to code to Web Standards? (each site is missing either a DOCTYPE, character encoding, or both) Surely there must be a reason… Web Standards are too difficult for them to implement (impossible) The cost of implementing Web Standards is too high (improbable) They don’t understand the benefits […]

Why don’t Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Google attempt to code to Web Standards? (each site is missing either a DOCTYPE, character encoding, or both) Surely there must be a reason…

Web Standards are too difficult for them to implement (impossible)

The cost of implementing Web Standards is too high (improbable)

They don’t understand the benefits of Web Standards (doubtful)

They don’t care about Web Standards (unlikely)

They don’t think users would react well to the change (possible)

Many of their users don’t have browsers that handle standards well (probable)

It’s not in the best interest of the bottom-line (likely)

4 of the top e-commerce companies in the World do not code to Web Standards. Isn’t this an elephant in the room? Assuming that these sites have talented and smart people running them, for which there is ample evidence, doesn’t/shouldn’t that tell us something?

I think that it tells us in no uncertain terms that for large e-commerce companies, the benefits of standards still do not outweigh the drawbacks.

What do you think their lack of compliance means?

Published: June 13th, 2005

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